Make New Playlists & Add Songs To Existing Playlists Easily with iTunes 11

If you upgraded to iTunes 11 you know the default view removed the sidebar with its playlist view. Sure it’s easy to show again, but if you’d rather keep with the new simplified user interface, don’t miss this simple trick to make a new playlist or add songs to a playlist, without using the standard sidebar ever again.

Click and hold on any song to reveal a temporary sidebar on the right

Drag the song into that floating sidebar to create a new playlist, or drag the song to an existing playlist to add it

These playlists can be found and edited further by clicking the “Playlists” tab as usual, and can be added to at any point by just clicking and holding anything else in the iTunes library. With this new feature, you can keep the iTunes interface simplified as the default setting suggests, and it actually starts to make more sense since the action of creating and editing playlists is hidden unless it’s needed.

You can see this in action with the video embedded below, which demonstrates a playlist being created and then songs being added to that playlist, all without showing the primary sidebar: